Healthy Food is Expensive

Healthy Food is Expensive Food,

Or is it?

There is a myth that correlates to the triangle scheme above. You can have tasty healthy food, but if empty your pocket. You can get healthy cheaper food but it'll lack taste. The most common choice, cheap and tasty, which correlates to fast food. Everyone thinks fast food is cheap because "Oh, it's a dollar a burger."

 So lets say you bought a McChicken. The cost of buying a McChicken from McDonalds costs 1 dollar. The sandwich contains a single chicken patty, a plain bun, mayo, and a little bit of lettuce. The cost of McDonalds to make that would cost based on the charts below is the average cost of a McChicken for McDonalds seems to be about 50 cents. These two food cost charts were obtained by 2 bloggers from reddit who work for McDonalds.

 

That’s a 50 cent revenue for every dollar you spend for a McChicken. The sandwich itself packs 430 calories, which 48% of the calories comes from fats, it has 35% of daily sodium needed and had 35% of total fats needed per day.

Home cooked has always been a favorite of people, whether it’s working parents coming home, kids coming home, or college students visiting back home during a break. Regardless of who you are if have consumed enough outside food in a certain period of time you will be craving food that’s was cooked by yourself or close family members. Let’s say instead of buying a McChicken you wanted to make your own chicken sandwich from Wal-Mart and make it yourself. You will need at minimum what was in the McChicken: Lettuce, bun, mayo, and the chicken itself. I went to a local Wal-Mart and obtained the price and took a picture of the  nutritional label of each ingredient.

Since we're buying our own ingredients we can create our own version of the McChicken but in order to be comparable we would have to use the same ingredients. Let’s start off with the bun. A pack of 8 buns would cost $1.28 cents. Buns limit the number of sandwiches we can make, because there are only 8 buns. Each bun has 120 calories mostly coming from carbohydrates. You can also get other buns such as whole wheat or other specialty types, but I’m using the generic Wal-Mart buns because it is relatively cheap compared to other buns. College student will also favor the cheaper items over brand named groceries because they need to worry about their other financial expenditures. One might say the buns itself are more expensive than the McChicken. I wasn't finish. Below are other values from the nutritional label on the buns. 

We have two other ingredients, mayo and lettuce. The lettuce at Wal-Mart was pre-shredded romaine lettuce that had 7.5 ounces that is more than necessary for our chicken sandwiches. Let’s say a .75 ounce is needed to mimic the McChicken. It had 10 calories per every 3 ounces, which has almost zero contribution to the total calories of the sandwich.

              

The mayo chosen is a light mayo from Kraft. It is a lighter mayo so it will only have 35 calories and less fat. Also the quantity given is way too much for 8 sandwiches which will cause slightly higher cost per sandwich.

Now the where the controversy comes in, the actual chicken patty. Since both chicken patties came from a factory farm method of production, some say one couldn’t be better than the other. Although it could be true, we know that McDonald’s treats their food with heavy amounts of antibiotics and other things. There was recent scandal about the pink slime used in McDonald's Chicken The chicken patties from Tyson claims to be 100% natural and in the ingredients there isn’t any obscure ingredients in processed food like Thiamin Mononitrate or Maltodextrin which can be found in Totino’s Pizza Rolls. So we can assume it is the better half of the meat from factory farms. The chicken patty has 170 calories, 70 of those calories coming from fats. 

Now to bring it all together,

Product	Total Price	Number of servings from purchase	Price of 1 serving for the sandwich	Calories	Calories from fat
Buns	$1.28	8	.16 cents	120	15
Lettuce	$1.58	10	.158 cents	3.33	0
Kraft Light Mayo	$3.24	44	.074 cents	35	30
Tyson Chicken Patty	$3.97	10	.397	170	70

As you can see the price per serving is comparable to the charts of McDonalds food cost.

Now when you compare the Wal-Mart McChicken to the McChicken

	Total Price	Total price  for making 8 McChickens	Price Per Sandwich	Total Calories	Calories from fat	Percentage of calories from Fat
Store bought “McChicken”	$10.07	6.32	.79 cents	328.3	115	35%
McDonalds McChicken	$1.00	8.00	1.00	430	207	48%

According to the table, the store bought McChicken is cheaper per sandwich than the McChicken. It has the illusion of being expensive by the initial investment of ten dollars. With choosing the store bought McChicken, you'll cut calories and fat. With making your own McChicken you could lose time and convenience, but that depends on person to person. The McDonald's McChicken could have benefits if your running late somewhere and your hungry you can grab it every once in while. Like my mom always says, "Everything is good in moderation." When you go grocery shopping consider the label on there the price per ounce while buying groceries and know you are buying the cheaper and healthier option and tastier option.